Includes bibliographical references (pages 470-475) and index

Eva Braun is one of history's most famous nonentities. She has been dismissed as a racist, feather-headed shop girl, and yet six decades after her death her name is still instantly recognizable. She left her convent school at the age of seventeen and met Hitler a few months later. She became his mistress before she was twenty. How did unsophisticated little Fräulein Braun, 23 years his junior, hold the most powerful man in Europe in an exclusive relationship that lasted from 1932 until their joint suicide? Were they really lovers, and what were the background influences and psychological tensions of the middle-class Catholic girl from Munich who shared his intimate life? How can her ordinariness and apparent decency be reconciled with an unshakeable loyalty to the monster she loved?--From publisher description

Never such innocence again -- The first strange and fatal interview -- Eva's family -- Eva, Goethe, Schubert and Bambi -- Tedious lessons and rebellious games -- Hitler's childhood -- Adolf to Führer, schoolgirl to mistress -- Eva become Fräulein Braun, Hitler becomes Führer -- Bavaria, the German idyll -- Geli and Hitler and Eva -- Dying to be with Hitler -- Diary of a desperate woman -- The photograph albums and home movies -- Mistress-in-waiting -- Eva leaves home -- Mistress -- Germany on display: the olympics -- The best years: idling at the Berghof -- The women on the Berg -- Three, three, the rivals -- 1937-9 -- Eva at the Berghof: 'A golden cage' -- 1938-9 -- The last summers of peace -- The war years -- 1939 -- war approaches -- Waiting for Hitler to win the war -- Eva, Gretl and Fegelein -- 1941-3 -- What could Eva have known? -- What could Eva have done? -- What Hitler did -- Culmination -- February 1944-January 1945 -- Eva at the Berghof with Gertraud -- The Stauffenberg plot and its consequences -- In the bunker -- Hitler's last stand -- Frau Hitler for thirty-six hours

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